Not everyone in the Gillard government will be thrilled that Australia’s campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council has finally triumphed.

Such is the level of bitterness of some towards former prime minister
Kevin Rudd
that even an unqualified success such as this will be resented rather than celebrated.

Rudd will justifiably bask in the glory of Australia’s success in New York. And, as he does, some of his Labor colleagues won’t be able to bear to watch.

A Rudd triumph is the last thing that his most trenchant opponents in the Labor Party will want to acknowledge. Especially right now, when the Rudd factor is again feeding internal Labor unrest.

Since
Julia Gillard
crushed Rudd’s ill-timed attempt to seize back the Labor leadership in February, there has been unease among Gillard’s supporters about the possibility of a third Gillard-Rudd showdown.

Nobody has been under any illusion that the vote in February killed Rudd’s desire to reclaim the leadership.

A particularly unfortunate aspect of the tyranny of minority government for Gillard and her supporters has been that she has been powerless to kill off the Rudd threat once and for all by forcing him out of the Parliament.

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So Rudd sits conspicuously in his place on the Labor backbench, watching, waiting and wanting to reclaim the leadership.

It’s still an extremely uncomfortable presence for Gillard, despite her public insistence that her place is secure and that she will lead Labor to the election.

With what is in effect his immunity from exile, Rudd is free to continue working hard to maintain a high political profile.

He insists that he has no intention of challenging again for the party leadership but his presence and his visibility are in themselves statements of his availability for the job.

There is no shortage of offers of engagements for Rudd – including from Labor MPs.

“Anyone in the caucus who doesn’t want Kevin campaigning in their electorate needs their head read," one MP said this week.

“He’s by far the most popular politician in the country and the crowds love to see him."

Rudd’s popularity with the public eludes both Gillard and
Tony Abbott
. There was irritation in the Gillard camp this week when Rudd turned up to campaign in the seat of Banks, held by long-serving MP
Daryl Melham
. Melham resigned as chairman of the Labor caucus last week, saying he needed to devote himself to holding his marginal Sydney seat.

That Rudd arrived so quickly to help Melham was seen by Gillard’s supporters as a provocation.

Rudd would not have been bothered by this.

Two weeks ago a story in Rudd’s hometown newspaper, The Courier Mail, quoted an unnamed senior figure from the Gillard camp as saying that Rudd’s conspicuous ambition was destabilising for Labor and it was likely that Gillard would have to “crush" Rudd again before the election.

Rudd supporters took this as a provocation and a signal that Rudd should be more active rather than less. Since then, he has been.

This week he used several media appearances to call for a more moderate tone in political debate, remarks seen in the Labor caucus as questioning the wisdom of Gillard’s verbal muscling up to Tony Abbott.

And Rudd also bought into an issue which has been causing deepening tensions behind the scenes within the government – the tough number crunching under way to ensure the commitment to returning the budget to surplus is met.

Rudd pointedly referred to the success that the big mining companies had in dramatically winding back the scope of the mining tax after Gillard took the leadership from him.

The Gillard-redesigned mineral resources rent tax (MRRT)came into operation on July 1. Latest indications are that it will collect only a fraction of the revenue that would have been collected by Rudd’s original resources super profit tax.

When the Rudd tax was unveiled in May 2010, it was forecast to raise $12 billion in its first two years. The last budget estimated the MRRT would raised just $6.5 billion.

The big mining companies now say they may have no MRRT liabilities in the first year.

Shrinking revenue and big spending plans for education and disability insurance have forced ministers to scramble to find savings to meet their politically vital promise to deliver a budget surplus. It’s been a difficult and painful exercise.

Rudd’s backers say the political pain that this will cause can be traced back to the decision to dump Rudd and his tax and Gillard’s subsequent cave-in to the big miners.

This raises the political stakes on the imminent release of the midyear budget update by Treasurer
Wayne Swan
.

Budget pain will add to internal stresses in the government left by the fallout of the handling by Gillard and Attorney-General
Nicola Roxon
of the political and legal matters around the
Peter Slipper
affair.

The heat will be turned up on these internal problems by the release this week of former Rudd loyalist
Maxine McKew
’s book about her political career – truncated, in her view, by Rudd’s demise.

The curse that Labor imposed on itself with the destruction of Rudd’s prime ministership is as deadly as it ever was.